...we will not be silenced and will not be intimidated. We will continue to fight falsehood everywhere, whether it takes the form of violence, sexism, racism, homophobia, or any other form of injustice. Our only weapons will continue to be truth, compassion, and honesty.

"And say, 'The truth has come, and falsehood has perished; for falsehood is bound to Perish.'" -- Qur'an 17:81

The FBI needs to be involved, because their hack includes explicit death threats. They photoshopped the MWU logo to "Murtad (apostate) Wake Up" instead of "Muslim Wake Up", and have litterred their piece with references to "final warnings". This is not the first time that a death threat has been issued by the cybertaliban - via Rebecca MacKinnon, Hossein Derakhshan (who remains the God Father of Iranian blogging) has received death threats from a blog calling itself the Islamic Army (how original). Hoder has been following up with the police, and I am sure MWU will take similar action.

Here's the infantile text they have replaced the main page with:

due to the continues violation by Muslim Wake Up website and its vile attack on Islam for a long period of time we at the Islamic 0xChallenge Brigades decided to deliever a powerful message to the people behind this website and so we started with an attack on MWU forum , all praise be to Allah the attack was successful but unfortunally the people running this website didn't understand our message and continued their attack on Islam and so we decided to deliever yet more powerful message and here we are!!

IT'S YOUR FINAL WARNING, MWU CREW!!

* No more slandering of the Mujahdeen
* No more peverts allowed to speak about Islam like Mohja Kahf and her warm fluid fantasies
* No more using our beloved prophet name in one of your dirty pornographic stories
* No more slandering of the respected scholars of Islam
* No more anti hijab articles

>> Optional

* remove the pic of the Egyptian girl with half bare breasts from your "Pornogrphy and the Ummah" section
* ask mohja Kahf to get a life
* stop being a minbar for hypocrites and learn the real Islam!
* move "hug a jew" to "sex and the Ummah" section......go figure why!

They claim to have deleted MWU's "Sex and the Ummah" section from the server. That section was very explicit; the latest entry was a short story about a muslim male who was cheating on his wife and delved into how his guilt manifested in increased piety at home and the mosque. It was crude and explicit and yes, even offensive at times, but it was a powerful critique of how culturally-inherited misogyny coupled with misogynistic self-serving interpretations of the faith lead to self-destructive behavior.

The obsession with mohja kahf is noteworthy - like Maryam's masterful critique of Theo van Gogh's film The Submission, I see in Kahf's writings an Islam I barely recognize. The males in Kahf's essays seem to be as imprisoned as the woman praying in van Gogh's film, by an Islam not of their devising but which has them firmly and cruelly within their grip. But Kahf deserves to write about the "dark side" of muslims' attitudes towards women just as van Gogh deserved to make films about it - and neither deserves censorship, let alone death.

MWU will be back, and I will continue to have my issues with their approach to the faith, which can be basically summarized as "the salad bar Deen" approach. But as victims of this puerile attack, they deserve nothing but unqualified support from the Islamsphere.

1 comment:

I'm a non-Muslim who joined MWU a while back, as I was impressed by the quality of discussion, the honesty with which people approached issues,and the wit people there displayed. It's the kind of site that distiguishes itself from most internet fora.

I'm saddened to hear of this childish attack. My best to the MWU folk.